Privatising the state

...but not in the way any sane member of the public would want. Ian Parker-Joseph, writing at the Libertarian Party blog, has a very interesting post about the bureaucracy setting up private companies (limited by guarantee) to perform work that you or I would expect to be state-run. The examples he gives are the Association of Chief Police Officers and SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers).

As Ian PJ points out, SOLACE advises on recruiting local authority chief executives and setting their salary levels. It includes several chief executives on its board, so there is a clear conflict of interest. As he says, it's a pretty clear case of racketeering.

One other interesting facet of this scandal which Ian doesn't pick up on is the fact that structuring these bodies outside the public sector makes them immune to Freedom of Information requests.

Handy, that.

Met Office forecasts

September 2008:The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.

January:2009:Severe weather warnings have been issued as temperatures in the UK dipped as low as -11C (12.2F) overnight.

A response from Prof Hardaker

With commendable speed, Professor Hardaker, the CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society has responded to my email asking for a statement on the Society's position on one of its journals standing in the way of an attempt to replicate a study published there.

Thanks for your note. I've had a couple of emails relating to this discussion and the position currently is as Prof McGregor mentioned. As I have mentioned to others who have emailed in, I'm very happy to consider the requirement for a clear policy statement and as suchI have put this on the agenda for the next meeting of the Society's Scientific Publishing Committee, at which all the Editors of the Society's journals are members. 

While I had hoped for at least some sort of recognition of the need for replication, it may be that Prof Hardaker feels he can't commit the Society to a new policy one way or the other without discussing the matter with his colleagues, and this is not an unreasonable position.

I would hope that the Society would start out from a position that every published study should be replicable and that both the data and code to do so should be in the public realm at the time of publication. The oft-cited policies of econometrics journals would be as good a place to start as any.

My concern would be that the committee ducks the issue by putting in place a bland policy stating that authors should make data available on request or some such, which then merely opens the question of what happens should authors refuse to do so - would the journal withdraw the paper? Would they sue the authors for breach of contract?.  Assuredly not. It is surely in the interests of the Society to avoid having to deal with any of this kind of unpleasantness by ensuring that the data and code are handed over up front.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Update on Jan 5, 2009 by Bishop Hill

In response to a follow-up email, Prof Hardaker has provided some more details:

Many thanks for the pointer to the blog and I would be very happy to feed your thoughts into the discussion. I'd also be very happy to share with you the decision of the Committee, and of course any new policy would be publicised through our respective Journal pages. I would wholly expect that if the Committee decided to establish a policy it would do so for all the journals in the Society's portfolio, but that's just my assumption. The Scientific Publishing Committee next meets in early May. I recognise this is a little way away but it will give us the time to take a considered look at the comments we have received and best practice from other respected journals in time for when we send the committee paperwork out in April. I will also make sure the Chair of our Committee sees all the correspondence we have had associated with this.

Data archiving

Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has been trying to get hold of the dataset underlying a study by prominent IPCC author, Ben Santer. Santer himself has (rather snottily) told him that he can't have the data, while the journal in question, the International Journal of Climatology, has refused to help too. The editor, one Dr MacGregor, has said that they do not require authors to archive data as a condition of publication and that data can be obtained from the authors. This was rather cheeky, given that the authors had already refused to release a thing.

The International Journal of Climatology is a published by Wiley on behalf of the Royal Meteorological Society. I have now written to the Chief Executive of the RMS asking for a statement on the society's position on the issue

Dear Professor Hardaker

I read with great interest a recent article on the Climate Audit blog http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4742, which reported on attempts to obtain copies of the datasets underlying a paper published in the International Journal of Climatology. According to the journal's editor, Dr MacGregor:

"It is not the policy of the International Journal of Climatology to require that data sets used in analyses be made available as a condition of publication. Rather if individuals are interested in the data on which papers are based then they are encouraged to communicate directly with the authors."

I found it frankly rather amazing that a journal would adopt a position of not requiring datasets to be availableas a condition of publication,given the importance of replication in the scientific process. It also seems somewhat unhelpfulof the editor to suggest a direct approach to the authors as a possible remedy, given that the authors in question had already turned down such a request. Mr McIntyre at Climate Audit has subsequently made unfavourable comparisons between the policies of IJC and the Royal Society's Phil Trans B which has adopted and enforced a policy on data archiving (see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4754), and given that the paper in question is now essentially unreplicatable, I find it hard to disagree with this position.

Since this is a matter of pressing public concern, I was wondering if you would care to issue a statement on the Society's position on the importance of replication and the availability of data used in its publications, both in general terms and in relation to the paper in question. I think it is important for the Society to make a stand on the credibility of the papers that are published under its name. This would be an excellent subject for a posting on your blog.

I have published this letter on my own website at bishophill.squarespace.com and will of course link to or publish any response you give.

Kind regards

My feeling on this issue is that the Society has probably never concerned itself with nitty-gritty issues like data archiving, but that they could and should. It will be interesting to see what Professor Hardaker has to say.

(Professor Hardaker's blog is here).